Data is the lifeblood of modern businesses, and the loss of data can have devastating consequences. From financial data to customer information, companies rely on this information to operate efficiently and make informed decisions. Unfortunately, data loss is not uncommon, and it can happen due to a variety of reasons – including viruses, hard drive crashes, and cyberattacks.
According to a recent survey conducted on more than 300 companies in South Africa by Cibecs, it was revealed that 38% of the companies still rely on outdated data security strategies that require users to comply with a policy and manually back up their data to a central file server or external hard drive. What’s even more alarming is that 9% of the businesses surveyed admitted to having no data protection measures in place at all.
Backing up data has been a necessary practice for decades – It involves creating copies of data to safeguard against data loss, allowing businesses to restore their data in the event of a disaster. However, the landscape of data backup has changed in recent years, and simply backing up data is no longer sufficient. Instead, companies need to focus on data protection, which includes cybersecurity measures to safeguard their data backups from modern threats.
Modern Threats to Data.
Data backups face a mixture of threats that can compromise their integrity and availability. Some of the most common threats include:
- Data Centre Outages: Data backups stored in the cloud are vulnerable to data centre outages. These outages can result from server crashes or other factors, leading to data loss.
- Sleeper Ransomware: This type of ransomware is designed to remain dormant after infecting a device, allowing it to spread throughout a network and infect all backups. When activated, the victim has no clean backups to restore.
- Supply Chain Attacks: Cloud vendors used by businesses can suffer cyberattacks that spread throughout their client base, compromising backups and other data.
- Misconfiguration: Misconfiguration of security settings can leave cloud storage vulnerable to attackers who can gain access and download or delete files.
Essential Features of Data Protection Backup Systems.
To ensure that data backups are adequately protected, businesses need to choose backup solutions that provide robust data protection features. Some of the key elements to look for include:
Ransomware Prevention
Ransomware can spread across a network and infect all types of data, including data stored on computers, servers, mobile devices, and cloud platforms that are synced with those devices. Around 95% of ransomware attacks also attempt to infect data backup systems. To safeguard against ransomware attacks, it is crucial to use a data backup solution that has protection against ransomware. This feature can prevent automated file changes that may compromise the integrity of essential documents.
Continuous Data Protection
Continuous data protection is a function that enables files to be backed up in real time as users make modifications. This varies from systems that back up data based on a predetermined schedule, such as once a day. Continuous data protection guarantees that the system captures the most recent file alterations, minimizing data loss that may occur if a system crashes before the next backup. As data generation occurs at a rapid pace nowadays, losing a day’s worth of data can result in significant costs.
Threat Identification
It’s essential to adopt proactive measures to protect your data. When selecting a backup service, prioritize those with threat identification functions. These tools enable malware and virus prevention by scanning new and existing backups for potential threats. With this feature, sleeper ransomware and other malicious software can be detected and stopped from infiltrating all backups.
Zero-Trust Tactics
Cybersecurity experts worldwide advocate for the implementation of zero-trust security protocols, which can include multi-factor authentication and application safe listing. The zero-trust approach operates under the premise that continuous authentication is required for all users and applications. Some essential features to look for when implementing zero-trust security measures include multi-factor authentication, specific file and folder permissions, contextual authentication, and the verification of permissions for file modifications.
Backup Redundancy
Having only one copy of your files on a USB drive or CD leaves you vulnerable to data loss if something happens to that copy.
To avoid such risks, cloud backup providers use backup redundancy. This involves mirroring your data to another server so that in case of a server crash, natural disaster, or cyberattack, your data is not lost.
Air Gapping
Air gapping is a technique that involves creating a secondary backup copy of your data and keeping it isolated offline or on a server disconnected from external sources.
If you work with highly sensitive data, you may want to consider using air gapping as an extra layer of protection. This ensures that you have at least one additional backup copy of your data, which is not susceptible to common internet-based attacks.
Backing up and safeguarding your data
Backing up data is essential for businesses of all sizes, but simply backing up data is no longer sufficient to protect against modern threats. Businesses need to focus on data protection, which includes robust cybersecurity measures to safeguard against data loss. By choosing backup solutions that provide key data protection features like ransomware prevention, continuous data protection, threat identification, zero-trust tactics, backup redundancy, and air gapping, businesses can ensure that their data backups are secure and can be restored in the event of a disaster.
Get in touch with us for assistance in safeguarding your data. Our team of experts can help you with effective backup and protection measures to ensure your information stays secure. You can reach us at info@theoasis.co.za & (011) 784 9167, or find us located at 117 11th Street, Parkmore, Sandton, Johannesburg.
